Having been Latvia at the beginning of the year, I do agree with Boris that there doesn't seem to be nearly so much challenging of communism's atrocities as fascism's.
Of the small amount of political writing that I have read, George Orwell's essays are my favourite, particularly his reporting on how British communists supported fascism when the Soviets were allied to the Nazis and then tried to claim they never had done.
I think my own differing reactions to Stalinism and Fascism are partially down to a mistrust of western reporting of the the USSR during the cold war, partially down to my family history and partially down to having less moral revulsion to the intellectual ideals of marxism than to those of fascism while still condemning particular implementations of marxism.
I'm pretty ignorant of left / right politics; I could be more informed, but I find much of it too boring.
Also we've had over 50 years of knowing practically all the details of the Nazi regime, with photos of the death camps being liberated, survivors to tell tales, trials, etc. In comparison, a lot of the details of Stalin's atrocities became known in the West more recently. I remember reading in the Sunday Times when I was about 7 about the Katyn massacre, which had just been discovered (a few locals who knew about it had kept their mouths shut for years). There's also been many more people in the West working to ensure the world is aware of the Nazi holocaust, whereas people aware of Stalin's victims were either dead or stuck behind the Iron Curtain. With the result that not much of communism atrocities gets taught in schools (I actually had a term on Russia 1930-53, but most didn't), compared to assemblies and years of lessons on fascist Germany. Eastern Europe was a mystery - the most we knew about it was that there was this wall you couldn't escape over, from the children's game 'Berlin Wall'.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2005-06-30 11:31 am (UTC)Of the small amount of political writing that I have read, George Orwell's essays are my favourite, particularly his reporting on how British communists supported fascism when the Soviets were allied to the Nazis and then tried to claim they never had done.
I think my own differing reactions to Stalinism and Fascism are partially down to a mistrust of western reporting of the the USSR during the cold war, partially down to my family history and partially down to having less moral revulsion to the intellectual ideals of marxism than to those of fascism while still condemning particular implementations of marxism.
I'm pretty ignorant of left / right politics; I could be more informed, but I find much of it too boring.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-30 08:40 pm (UTC)In comparison, a lot of the details of Stalin's atrocities became known in the West more recently. I remember reading in the Sunday Times when I was about 7 about the Katyn massacre, which had just been discovered (a few locals who knew about it had kept their mouths shut for years).
There's also been many more people in the West working to ensure the world is aware of the Nazi holocaust, whereas people aware of Stalin's victims were either dead or stuck behind the Iron Curtain. With the result that not much of communism atrocities gets taught in schools (I actually had a term on Russia 1930-53, but most didn't), compared to assemblies and years of lessons on fascist Germany. Eastern Europe was a mystery - the most we knew about it was that there was this wall you couldn't escape over, from the children's game 'Berlin Wall'.